I’m excited to announce that I will be compiling around 20 tracks into a “Best of” Improv Monday 2024 album! The album will allow you to relive the year through music and add all your personal favourites to your playlists.
I started Improv Monday back in January because I had made it my New Year’s Resolution to start posting music regularly to social media. My compositional approach is rooted in improvisation anyway so I saw it as a good place to start generating new music.
More than 35 improvisations later, I’m still going and enjoying every minute of it! It takes me approximately 2/3 hours every Monday to record, export and create a video for the music.
When I started, this purely consisted of me filming myself playing the piano and posting the first substantial thing that came into my head. I’ve had to be imaginative with my limited equipment here at uni – at one point I was using my kitchen pan to balance my phone for filming! The sound quality has also come a long way since my first video.
As the year has progressed, I’m becoming more ambitious each week. It’s got to the point where I’m not entirely sure “Improv Monday” is the best name any more – I like to challenge myself to write and produce entire 1-2 minute compositions in the time. After all, working quickly is crucial in the media industry and training my creative muscles can’t do any harm.
You may be wondering what’s next for Improv Monday. I’ll be taking a break over Christmas to format everything into the 2024 album (I’ve got a lot of filing and admin to do), but then I will resume Improv Monday in early 2025! I’ve got some collaboration plans and exciting new ideas that I’m looking forward to sharing with you.
There’s also a wonderful bank of suggestions coming in – here is the form for submitting Improv Monday ideas: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemL6-aki5-BWb89ATJJ7gp1DOV3ZbRuzELlNu-tJdzxhj1ag/viewform?usp=sf_link